Its aims were simple. The German people had been guilty of starting two wars, and of pursuing a policy of racial extermination towards the Jews. The national soul was dark with guilt. The time had come for atonement, the time had come when the tremendous energy of a people impelled by a sense of great destiny – until now manipulated into the dark side channels of power – must be used to create the true German national character. Every German had a duty to make atonement to the past through his every action, every day, no matter how humble or how important his role in the national life was. The true greatness which awaited the Germans lay in adhering unswervingly to the democratic principle in political life and the Christian ethic in private and public life.
The Atonement Party, which had been in existence for three years, asked for no more from its members than that – except their yearly subscription of ten marks, nearly a pound.
It was a straightforward statement, admirably simple and commendable. If it was a bit woolly about what one had to do it was no more so than a great many other worthy causes. Most Germans, I imagined, would rightly answer – without feeling obliged to cough up ten marks – that they were already at heart members of the Atonement Party.
However, Wilkins had talked to a woman in the shop, making it seem that she was all for the party, and had been told that of the four hundred and ninety-seven members of the Bundestag over two hundred were members of the A. Party. There were also influential supporters of the party in other countries.
The lunatic fringe works its feelers into all sorts of places. I was convinced that Manston – in the role of Sir Alfred Coddon, K.B.E., C.V.O., was heading for the same place as myself, but by a different route.
So, there it was, a whip to drive the national guilt from the hearts of the Germans.
The real crunch, though, was that Wilkins had been told that the party was holding a grand Atonement Rally in Munich in three weeks’ time. It took a little while to get to sleep after that.
I must have been asleep about half an hour when the telephone by the bed rang.
It was Stebelson.
He said, “I thought you’d like to know something that’s just come over the tape.”
“Go ahead. But I don’t own any shares so I can’t have been wiped out.”
“You nearly were, my friend. Half an hour ago a bomb attached to the underside of a bed in the Hotel Castiglione exploded.”
I held my breath for a moment. Then in a rather small voice I said, “What room?”
“It didn’t say. But have you any doubts?”
“No. Thank you.” I put the receiver back. That clever bastard Howard Johnson. He was growing up fast. The bomb had been put there before I came back from Vérité’s flat. No instructions on Spiegel yet, he’d said. That must have given him a giggle. I switched the shaded bedside lamp on, wondering if I should go and find a brandy as a tranquillizer.
The door of my room was open and Vérité was standing between it and the bed.
She said, “Who was it?”
I said, “Wrong number. What are you doing here?”
“I have the next room.” She came over to me. She was wearing a long green silk dressing-gown with a froth of ruffles around the shoulders. She held it together across her breasts and I saw her two hands shake a little as though she were cold.
“Liar,” she said. “I listened on the other extension. You could have been sleeping in that bed.”
I reached up and took her hand and she came down on to the bed beside me. “I’m sleeping in this bed,” I said.
“Don’t you care?” she said. “About yourself? You might have been killed.”
“Of course I care,” I said. “I like being alive. For God’s sake I like being alive, and so do you. I can’t think of anything that’s better than being alive....”
I switched off the light and put my arms around her. She was naked under the gown.
* Yugoslavs
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LOVE, K. AND V.
She was gone when I woke up. The sun was coming through the partly drawn curtains, bathing the Corot with a warm golden glow, but the bed was still warm at my side and her pillow was hollowed and scented.
I went into the bathroom, shaved, and took a shower. With hot water needling my skull, I thought about the A. Party. It seemed innocuous enough – the kind of lunatic fringe party you can find in most countries. But it had to be more than that with Vadarci running it, and with Manston giving it a priority rating that had made him get more than tough with me. Now, I could paint a pretty accurate picture of things for myself. Munich, the whip sign, Stigmata, the blond Siegfried type on the Komira, and Katerina and Lottie, a couple of hand-picked Rhine-maidens – but why get so burnt up about it all? To me it didn’t seem to merit any high rating – I’d have put the British Union of Fascists way above it, and they had never made Manston lose a night’s sleep.
As I dried myself on the largest towel I’d ever seen and which I could just manhandle, Stebelson wandered in without knocking.
He said, “I’ve come to wish you bon voyage.”
I kicked the door shut with a bare foot and nodded to the bath stool. He sat down and stared sadly at my knees.
I said,
